Changing demographics are leading to a new kind of meeting – welcome to ‘cappuccino commerce’
COFFEE SHOP CULTURE SEEMS LIKE A RELATIVELY RECENT IMPORT TO BRITAIN, but we have been at it for years. Turn the clock back to 1688 when merchants and shipowners gathered at Edward Lloyd’s coffee shop on London’s Tower Street to hear the latest shipping news… this was the forerunner of today’s eponymous insurance market.
Despite that long heritage, the coffee shop as a meeting place has really come of age in the past decade. According to market research firm Allegra, there are now almost 19,000 coffee shops in the UK, up from 10,685 in 2008. This figure is expected to reach 27,000 by 2020.
126 BBT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016
MEETINGS TO GO
Statistics from Concur show that, among the expense management tech provider’s 27 million users, coffee chain Starbucks is the number one location for out-of-office meetings. The chain is so important for Concur it has now enabled business users to earn My Starbucks Rewards Stars for business-related purchases. But the rise in what some people are calling ‘cappuccino commerce’ also has its downsides. Research for London’s Clubhouse found that busi- ness people without a base in the city are spending £5,824 a year in cafés, hotel lobbies, bars and restaurants to pass time. Chris Ward, successful entrepreneur and author of coffee culture books Out of Office
and Grounded, is a firm believer in the coffee shop as a place of work. His introduction to coffee shop culture started a few years ago. “I was running my own company with 100 staff and finding I was getting nothing done because there was always a queue outside my office,” he says. “I disappeared to the coffee shop opposite and found I was more productive and creative.” The glorification of start-up culture has also imbued the coffee shop-as-workplace with a certain sexiness. “Being an entre- preneur is more attractive than what we grew up with – the job for life working in an office,” says Ward. He frowns on the idea that a coffee shop can be considered a rent-free office. “If a sandwich costs £8 I have no problem paying that. I know what it costs to run these places and I pay my fair share – plus it’s still cheaper than renting.” Ward was recently asked to spearhead a campaign by screenwriter Richard Curtis, who was working with the United Nations. The brief was to get the CEOs of 35 mobile phone companies to agree to send texts to
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